Chapter 23

Christmas Miracles abound(1).

03:43 pm 15th December, Shrieking Shack, Hogwarts.

There was a loud clap as flesh met bone, as one man's fist met the other's jaw.

The latter had lost his balance for a second, and then promptly started rubbing his now sore jaw as soon as he regained the said balance, meanwhile the former's fists were once again balled up, the tension so thick that one would require Excalibur, the fabled sword in the stone, to cut it down.

The punch thrown was not a reflex defence from being startled, nor was it some kind or tactic offense to gain the advantage in combat, but a simple annoyed greeting from one friend to another.

And as their eyes met they read each other like open books, just like they used to all those years ago, Remus's eyes conveyed all of his confusion, anger, and despair, but also the hope buried beneath everything else, Sirius' eyes meanwhile held a simply concentrated determination.

Sirius, in continuation with his trend, broke the silence that had settled between them, "So…"

Remus sighed, even after all these years his friend was not one for eloquence, though perhaps part of the blame can be laid on to the fact that dementors aren't the best conversation partners, as such the white sheep of the black family had simply hadn't had the time or occasion to practice the art, and taking the lead offered by the dog man he began, "Yes Sirius, "SO" explain yourself and spare no detail."

And Sirius did as was asked from him, starting from back when the prophecy had been made to, the switcheroo between the secret keepers and the following consequences, after that he covered how he had been shipped to Azkaban without so much as a question, let alone a chance to explain the situation, and how he had escaped using his animagus form, as soon as he found a tempting enough incentive to.

Remus had been silent for the most of Sirius' tale; though the way his jaw and fists were flexing the thread of his patience was precariously close to snapping, which is what it did as soon as Sirius revealed the cause of his houdini'-ing out of Azkaban, and he roared "What!"

Instead of replying verbally Sirius simply fished out a copy of The Daily Prophet from his pocket, the very same one he had acquired from Fudge, and he felt the disbelief and rage pouring off Remus as he realized the rat perched on Ron's shoulder was none other than the supposed to be deceased Peter Pettigrew.

Of Course he himself had felt similar emotions when confronted with this reality, but he'd had the advantage of having twelve years of stewing in Azkaban and learning how to keep a leash on his emotions, lest he become a dine till you're full buffet for the dementors.

Then another bout of silence descended upon them which prompted another question within the mind of the werewolf, and after taking a considerable look at the dog man a few more followed, such as what was he doing all this while? How was he looking like someone who had been living a hale and healthy life instead of well; looking like he had done a decade's worth of stint in Azkaban? Or how he had escaped last month when Remus spotted him at the shack and even what was he doing here in the first place.

And those questions stumped Sirius, because he didn't know how would Harry react to Remus being let in on the know, especially since he had probably used up all of his luck on this meeting thus far, and he would have to cash in any and all of his good will earned formed his godson to avoid his immediate warth in form of an impromptu execution when he informed the boy of this gamble.

So all he could do was awkwardly stare at Remus before he got an idea and countered with some questions of his own, "Have you met Prongslet? And how's your relationship with him?"

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05:43 am 24th December, Godric's Hollow, Cemetery, Britain.

As a traveller travels the world, learning everything it has to offer, at the end they have to return their home, just as what was happening right now, if a metaphor had to be borrowed to describe the moment it'd be "The Return of the Prodigal Son" after all nearly two and a half years ago one Young Harry Potter had left his home armed with Ignorance, Naive Ideals and Ambitions, but along the travels had lost them only left to be wrapped in the rags made up Wisdom, Knowledge and Acceptance of Reality, rags in which he had returned to his home, to his parents, he stared at the tombstones of their graves as he stood waiting for something, his mission to bring back his parents had began here so it was completely logical for it to end here too, just like how his missions started and ended in the briefings at the Hit Wizards bases.

And so an hour passed and nothing happened, no new missions imposed themselves on his mind, as such he decided it was about time to leave, after all soon he needed to get ready with preparations for the girl's and Sirius' breakfast, also a part of his brain reminded him that he had to buy gifts for everyone at the Law's household as it was almost christmas, but before he could leave he felt someone slowly approach the grave site, he took a peak and it was a rather old woman, one he recognized, Bathilda Bagshot, she was his parents neighbour, steadily, with one step at a time she made it over the grave site, and as soon as she saw him her eyes narrowed to slits which then promptly shot open wide and her face formed a wide smile, she slowly asked, "Is it you young Harry?"

As he nodded in acknowledgement her smile widened even further and tears formed at the sides of her eyes, but before she could say anything else Harry's wand shot out of it's holster and with a short and swift wave he conjured a plum armchair just behind her.

Taking up on the given courtesy she made herself comfortable on the amply soft and wonderful chair, though one of her eyebrows did rise at the display of talent from the young boy, one neither Albus nor Gellert could've matched when they were his age.

She observed him for a while, the boy was if possible a parody of his parents, he looked like his father but acted nothing like him, where the former was as still as the land he stood on the latter was as free as the winds that blew around them, from the time the young couple had moved next door to her she had never seen young James still for even a second. And then there was Lily though their resemblance was little only extending to the eyes and the long hair, there was a difference to it too where Lily's eyes were open books to be read from the boy's eyes were like a tableau sealed off within a catacombs to never be seen by anyone else, where her hair was lively almost as if animated by her magic, his hair was frozen almost as if in a state of statis.

"Is this your first time visiting them?" she asked softly, she had visited the grave on both Halloween and Christmas each year, as she used to celebrate wit them when they were alive, but ever since the unfortunate events twelve years ago she hadn't seen him till today, maybe she simply had missed his timing, but still she was curious.

He shook his head to reply in Negative and didn't elaborate further.

Bathilda wasn't put off by the manner of the boy's reply, there was something in the way he acted that remind her of all the three Dumbledore siblings at the same time, he exuded an unflappable aura as if the will of the entire universe couldn't make him stop from getting what he wanted just like Ariana, his shoulders were hunched as if he was carrying the burden of Atlas just like Aberforth's, and like the last but not the least Albus with him the boy shared not only the gift of prodigious magic but also the steel in their eyes tempered by flames of trials.

She hummed for a while and looked around searching for any adult that might've accompanied the boy, but as a part of her mind had suspected there was none to be found and the boy had most probably arrived here all by himself.

'

Switching topics like the seasoned writer she is, she asked, "so what is it that you plan to do? If my math is right you must be in the third year of Hogwarts, and you have already selected two vocational courses? Do you have a goal in mind like a profession you would want to try for once you graduate?"

He simply shook his head.

Giving him an understanding nod, as that was the answer she expected, she told him something simple, "Give it time, it will come to you when it has to not any sooner or later, try whatever you can and want to, but also remember; coming from a historian this may sound a little cliche, but learn from it, for there is knowledge to be offered by every speck of creation, only dependant on the eye of the beholder."

Giving her a nod of acknowledgment, he gave her a bow and promptly departed from the graveyard apparating away, silently.

Which earned another set of raised eyebrows and some chuckling from the ancient historian.

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07:43 am 24th December, Girl's chamber, Room of requirements, Hogwarts.

Both godson and godfather stared at one another, the former blankly as usual while the latter with not a little trepidation etched on his face, after breakfast when the girl was set down for a nap the latter had finally told the former about his clandestine meeting with their mutual werewolf friend, and then asked if he could invite the aforementioned werewolf to hold an impromptu meeting, so far the boy hadn't even acknowledged the request let alone respond to it, and that made the dog man not a little nervous, then as anti-climatically as ever Harry pulled out his notepad and wrote on it "Time and place?"

Heaving out a sigh of relief the dog man responded, "I'll let you know as soon as things are arranged." he knew the implicit meaning behind the question posed by his godson, one, He'll come if he can, and two, Remus doesn't have the clearance to know about their current adobe.

Well it was a start.

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07:43 am 24th December, Zadar, Croatia.

The food in his mouth felt like trash; well it was trash, quite literally so, some old scraps thrown out by people, but he couldn't be picky especially now that his life was in danger in more than one way, but he did miss the delicious feast he used to dine upon till now, thought Peter Pettigrew with not a little bitterness.

He knew he had betrayed James, Lily, Sirius, Remus and Harry, was also quite ashamed of the fact, but like always he didn't have the courage to do what was right, that was also quite ironically why he had become friends with the Marauders, they had stood up for what was right, and he couldn't do that, and a choice he made 14 years ago with a tunnel vision full of darkness, he had made his bed.

Now he chose to lay in it.

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09:43 pm 24th December, Kitchen, Law's Household.

Usually on Christmas eve the kitchen would be bustling, but today it was as quiet as a morgue, the only noise that could be heard was that of Judy's ragged breathing as she prayed with her hands clasped and eyes closed.

Her eyes shot open and zeroed in on the door from where her daughter in law entered, the younger woman was just as worried as her if not more, and when their eyes met they could see their respective worries, and helplessness as if they had been given a physical manifestation.

Soon both the women heard the front door being opened with quite some force, without even giving themselves time to process anything, they ran to the hall room to encounter their respective husbands with malcontent expressions etched on their faces.

But for Judy, the straw that broke the camel's back was a cell phone in her son's hand, covered in blood, one she distinctively remembers, Handing it over to the oldest of their rugrats as her husband called them, and she started sobbing, pouring out all her grief and stress

Ever the mama's boy, Alex was the first to rush by her side, pulling her in a hug to let her get it out of her system, as she started to calm down he made her have a seat on the couch and told both the women, "we're not entirely sure what's happened, but the man who found Charlie's phone just said he had hear it ring when we called over and as, soon as he did he called over the bobbies, on their part they're trying to search her to the best of their abilities, and when they find anything they'll let us know."

The unsaid implications weren't lost on either of them women. And all four of them started thinking back from how the morning started in a merry mood, and then turned into a train wreck, Charlie had left in the morning to have a lunch party with her school friends, with the promise to return just in time for the evening feast, when she didn't make it on time at first they thought that she had simply lost track of time having fun, by the time it had been an hour over, they decided to give her a call which she didn't pick up, and then another, and then another, this was not her regular behavior, and it worried them, but they decided to not give in to the ebbing panic and contacted one of her friends who told them that while she had stayed behind for longer than she had originally agreed upon, it had already been over half an hour since she had left, and that's when all hell broke loose, for them.

But being the adults that they were, they split up their immediate tasks, the men went out to get a hold of the authorities while the ladies switched the feast to an impromptu regular meal, swiftly shepherding the children to their respective rooms without making them freak out, while it worked on the younger children the older ones looked not a little wary as they read the atmosphere, but they understood that right now the best thing they could do was to act as they were being told to.

And then here they were drowning in terror of worst case scenarios, and then the horrified silence that had settled between them as they were all giving themselves time to process the day's turn of events was shattered as the front door gently creaked open, thus giving Charlie an entrance who was followed by Harry at her tail.

They rushed at her as one and pulled her into a group bear hug with tears of relife streaming down their cheeks without any resistance, meanwhile Harry for his part simply shut the door back.

Then as soon as the emotional moment was over Alex properly noticed Harry, silently standing in the background, it took her mechanical brain a second to run all scenarios she could some up with and the best she could get at was "what the fuck?"

This startled the other members, especially Judy and Richard who were both secretly proud about the fact that their daughter in law who could swear enough to make sailors blush usually managed to restrain herself around the kids to a not a little degree, for her to say that it meant something big, and they all understood where she was coming from when they spotted the mysterious midget as Alex would call him in a small fit of petulant jealousy as the boy bonded with his wife and dad over mechanical geeking than he did, but as per their family's panic protocol, the kids were sent to their rooms in case like this situation in an ascending age pattern; the youngest to the oldest, that would mean Harry would've been one of the last one to be sent to bed, give or take that would've been 10 minutes ago, so it made no sense at all about how he came home with the missing Charlie, when he should've been in his bed.

Before any of the adults could say anything Charlie, quite literally, jumped in front of Harry, adopting a defensive posture she said, "wait don't get angry at him, he helped, we can explain, I think?" she turned back to look at the younger boy with a grimace wondering if she had messed up the things, unfortunately for her his face was as blank as ever.

Taking charge like she always did with her disaster of a family, Judy took a deep breath and then said in her most motherly voice, "No one's angry, Do we have questions? Yes, are we anxious? Definitely, but we're not angry, so how about we all take a seat and talk it out." she punctuated it with giving her husband a pointed look and then directing it to the couch.

As soon as everyone was seated, Judy began, "Okay so Charlie, can you tell us what happened?"

The teenage girl's face turned scarlet from the attention being directed at her and she ducked her face and swallowed audibly, she felt her eyes get wet and before she knew it she was once again engulfed in hug, quite gentler than last time, and only by RIchard who rubbed her back in a clock wise manner, she nodded to him when she calmed down enough, and then she addressed everyone, "I was at the party with everyone, and they told me to hang out for a little longer and I agreed, breaking my promise to all of you, and then I left half an hour later to get back here, and then,,," she once again started to get overwhelmed, immediately both the Alex's rushed towards her crouched by her knees and pulling her in a halfway hug of their own, the sole male of the hugging trio said, "sweetie trust me you're not wrong here, you did nothing wrong, coming from a former delinquent you're a two goody shoes, what you did was act like a teenager and that's good."

Nearly everyone snorted, with the obvious exception of Harry, as Alex being a delinquent was about as crazy as flying pigs, the man didn't have a violent bone in his body, and cried during kids cartoons, even when kids didn't.

Then Charlie began again, "So I was near the 5th malt street when I stopped for a minute to take some rest and then everything went black…." then she looked at Harry as if trying to ask him something without asking him, fortunately for Santa clocked in early this year and gave her two consecutive miracles for the day as he nodded towards her, and then she said, " next thing I know I'm opening my eyes ina warehouse somewhere, there are two guys unconscious lying far away from me, and Harry was hovering above me".

Simultaneously all the adults turned towards the boy and then Judy said, "Harry can you - will you? - tell us what happened in between? Fill in the blanks for us?"

Instead of answering in any of his usual methods Harry bought out his wand in his hand and gave it a counter clockwise swish above his head, suddenly bright chrome light poured out of the wand end and covered every nook and cranny of the living room, in the meanwhile everyone else was staring at the boy with eyes wide and jaws dropped.

Then he began, bringing out his trusty notebook, he began writing, "When everyone started to panic, I stepped back to observe the situation, when there were no plausible solutions, I decided to take action."

"What do you mean by take action?" asked Richard with not a little curiosity.

"I tracked her down, disabled her abductors, healed her injuries and then brought her back home." he replied.

"Wait? Track her down? Does that have something to do with the whole light show that erupted from your stick there in your hand?" Alex asked curiously as she eyed it.

Giving her a nod of acknowledgement he once again started writing down, "Yes, I am what laymen call a Wizard, I can use the force of magic to alter my surroundings to my desire."

All of their eyes were quite wide as they stared at the teenaged wizard, Alex was the first to break the silence that had settled in as they absorbed this new information, "That's so bloody cool! Hey! Wait! Does this have something to do with that fancy boarding school you go to?"

He nodded in acknowledgement again, and then wrote down, "The boarding school I go to is called Hogwarts, it teaches younger witches and wizards how to control and use their magic."

Alex continued her train of thought as she asked, "wait, are there more Witches and Wizards across the globe? Or is it just Britain? Also what was with the look Charlie gave you earlier? I mean I get it if I were in your shoes I'd not want others to find out that I'm practically Gandalf the white, many would want to take advantage of that, but still can you tell me why she asked for your permission? Also what did you mean by the laymen thing?"

He answered "I told Charlie not to tell anyone about what had transpired taking into account the fact that she would inform you of that, but I would have to impose that none of this information is to be dispersed beyond ourselves, it could plausibly land me into trouble with the magical governmental authorities. Also when I said laymen I meant that while Wizard is a term that has been modernly redefined to describe a male magical user it is a distance from what it had originally stood for."

This time Charlie was the first to react as she meekly asked, "What do you mean by trouble?"

And the answer was one they weren't sure what to feel about, "Legally I'm not supposed to display magic or divulge information about it to any non-magical, there are exceptions for a life and death situations, but even with those exceptions the non-magical person has to be obligated, which refers to a memory wipe, if the authorities discover that I haven't Oblivated Charlie I'll be either sent to Prison or My magic will be bound and my and Charlie's, and anyone whom she informs of any of this information will be also subjected to a memory wipe."

Thinking on the run as she usually did, Alex asked, "Okay so, why haven't you memory wiped us and instead actually took time to explain any of this?"

This time the answer shed a new light on the silent boy, "There are other exceptions such as non-magical family of a magical person, which should cover the four of you, but that does not cover Charlie, as such it would be for the best we never talk about any of this to anyone for the foreseeable future, also Oblivation, can have negative side effects on brains that haven't fully formed or are going through rapid hormonal changes, and to make it more complicated she had just suffered a concussion so it would be for the best to not try mental manipulation."

It warmed their hearts to think that the boy thought of them as their family, but only for a few seconds till Judy asked a question of her own, "Okay if the law covers us as your foster parents why doesn't it cover foster siblings?"

Harry simply cocked his head to the right and then replied, "To the best of my knowledge the law absolutely only covers blood family, while adoptive or foster families are a grey area that are looked upon case by case, depending on the situation, which is why I can say that the four of you are covered by the law as you do have a immediate magical relative by blood in form of Arthur."

It took them a minute to understand what was being said to them and then it hit them like a ton of bricks and their jaws dropped as they stared at the eccentric emerald eyed enigma.

A/n : - sorry for leaving it here, but wanna try my hand at a cliffhanger, of sorts at least, also sorry for the delayed posting, had Internet outage.